Quit dithering, the world needs the EU

For the past two and a half years the EU has effectively been hamstrung, not only by the ‘No’ votes in France and the Netherlands rejecting the constitution, but by the election cycles in several member states, most significantly Germany, Italy, Poland and France.

This process has inhibited progress on any significant issue in the Union, since leaders were too busy electioneering to pay attention to the EU’s agenda. It has also meant that the EU has been publicly denigrated, since weak politicians used it as the most reliable scapegoat for all national ills.

There was a general expectation that once France had elected a president matters would at last be put back on course. But now that Tony Blair has finally announced his resignation, the UK will be unavailable for interaction for a few months. Past experience suggests that this new national lacuna could be the perfect excuse for the rest of the EU’s leaders to continue not deciding on anything for another few months. There is room for slight optimism that things may be different this time round: in France, the new President Nicolas Sarkozy has declared his intention to be a strong leader, with a desire to put France back in Europe.

If he means it, there is no time like the present since, in neighbouring Germany, Angela Merkel needs him. Merkel is an impressively strong and clear-headed international leader, determined to have a successful finish to the German presidency of the EU. There is high expectation of the European Council and the G8 summit both delivering tangible progress next month, especially since the last EU-US summit offered slim pickings, while this week’s EU-Russia summit (18 May) is of extremely limited scope. This is not least because of an inability to get the EU member states’ leadership to co-operate coherently. There is much to co-operate on.

Internally, there is the prickly yet ultimately bureaucratic issue of institutional arrangements. In reality this is all that the constitution must deliver, as opposed to wishful thinking beyond. It must be disposed of rapidly and then time devoted to the truly pressing issues within the Union: the looming demographic crisis, the rise of social discontent because of immigration and the incoherence of the security and defence arrangements.

Externally, the EU must begin to take a more realistic approach to the Middle East conflicts and begin to engage for real. Currently the approach is to dismiss Iraq as a US folly that the UK got dragged into and some member states supported, whilst the Israel-Palestine conflict is dealt with by a collective shrugging of shoulders as a US-led matter which the US is failing on. In its own name, the EU has made no effort to engage as a player in either and unfortunately much the same is true of strife-ridden Africa, notwithstanding the occasional intervention in the Congo. Darfur has been burning for more than three years, a daily indictment of EU weakness and lack of political will. At least the US has had the decency to declare it a genocide - and then do nothing. The EU is still splitting hairs on definitions.

A closer glance will also reveal a synergy between the internal and external issues: the demographic crisis will ultimately be resolved in part by immigration, but the immigration needs to be organised, through clearly defined Union borders, run and protected through proper co-ordination between member states. Neither will security and defence be possible without stability and prosperity in Europe’s wider neighbourhood: the Middle East and Africa.

The era of dithering and of dismissing external policy issues as national matters, has long since passed. If the EU leaders had not spent so long blaming the EU while electioneering, they might have noticed this fact. Now that some have finally been elected, it is time for them to focus on these pressing common realities, for the sake of us all.

• Ilana Bet-El is an academic, author and policy adviser based in Brussels.

For the past two and a half years the EU has effectively been hamstrung, not only by the ‘No’ votes in France and the Netherlands rejecting the constitution, but by the election cycles in several member states, most significantly Germany, Italy, Poland and France.